


Wait to Watch Us Fall

by strangeallure



Series: Wait to Watch Us Fall [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, F/M, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, What-If, canon-divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-07 05:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17954753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/pseuds/strangeallure
Summary: Diverges from canon at the beginning of 1x14 "The War Without, The War Within". Michael stays with Ash Tyler and tries to help him heal after Voq is excised from his neural identity.He has gone through so much, she reminds herself, more than anyone should have to go through. He’s a victim, too, and she owes it to him to stay calm, to support him, to not leave him.Soon, it will be better.





	Wait to Watch Us Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the annual [poetry fic challenge](https://poetry-fiction.dreamwidth.org/).  
> Thank you to the mod for providing me with a lovely quote from a wondeful poet I didn't know before.
> 
> Thanks so much to frangipani for her beta skills and for pushing to expand this fic and make it something I'm very proud of.

“Michael,” he says, eyes wide, voice unsteady. The body under his light green hospital gown moves like it wants to get up, like it wants to push off of the biobed and get closer to her.

Only days ago, she herself had beamed that same body into the expanse of another universe’s space.

_“This one dies by my own hand.”_

But he hadn’t. Instead, she had used him to get a data chip with Defiance’s files back to Discovery. 

Discovery, which she boarded just in time to travel back home with them; where they let an enemy operative excise the Klingon from his neurological identity; where Saru hopes Michael’s presence will offer him encouragement to heal.

She doesn’t want him to heal. She wants him to hurt. 

Even more than that, she wants to run, but all of her muscles lock and her blood stops flowing, turns into ice. Her heart a frozen fist. 

It starts up again, thumping faster, more violent than ever. Pounding rhythm echoing in her skull. Every beat flooding the cells in her body with oxygen. Every fiber of her being running hot.

_Run. Flee. Escape._

Before she can give in to this primal impulse, the body on the biobed shrinks back into a slump, shining eyes looking up at her, gaze filled with pain. “I’m so sorry, Michael, I’m-“

The voice breaks off, and she’s thankful for it. It sounds small, almost desperate, but it reverberates.

Like when Voq revealed himself to her, she thinks, when he mocked her, when he told her he would kill her.

Saru and Dr. Pollard take over with a preliminary debrief, and as they ask their questions, Michael regains some measure of control over her own body and positions herself behind Saru. It’s a reprieve, one she knows won’t last long.

The man who appears to be Ash Tyler explains himself, and Michael forces her attention on his words, ignoring the pounding in her head. She needs to focus, she needs to know, she needs to understand.

The details are excruciating, but she commits every single one to memory. The flayed skin, the cut-up heart, the shaved-off fingertips. That Voq underwent the _species reassignment protocol_ willingly, that he did it for the love of a religious leader and maybe for the love of a woman, too.

And his hands- 

The muscles in her neck calcify, making it impossible to cast out the burgeoning memories with a shake of her head. Soft, strong hands that had felt so right against her skin, their touch and weight anchoring her, tying her to her humanity.

Those hands had killed Dr. Culber. 

Those hands had nearly strangled her.

“I belong in the brig,” he tells Saru, voice filled with self-loathing. His eyes dart towards her, then cut away, like he wants her assurance, but doesn’t dare ask for it, not even with a look. 

A wild hope in her begs for Saru to agree, for the acting captain to lock him away.

How could she be so cruel?

The man before them is so obviously damaged, convincingly human in his weakness, but even in this desolate state, he’s willing to help, too.

“I would do anything to undo what I've done,” he says, face turned up in a plea, and she knows he’s talking to her as much as he is to Saru and Pollard. 

His shoulders push back and he straightens, a convincing show of determination from a nearly-broken man. “Any information I can give you, anything I can search for in Voq’s memories, just say the word.”

Saru cannot possibly believe him, can’t place his trust in a procedure they don’t even understand, into the words of someone who deceived them so completely.

Michael’s own thoughts put her to shame. The man she loved – _loves?_ – survived a traumatic experience, and here she is, hoping for him to be locked away, just so she doesn’t have to content with her own conflicted emotions.

Then Saru produces a wrist monitor. Her stomach contracts and her shoulders curve, like her body is trying to absorb a punch in the gut.

“Voq is responsible for your crimes. And I see no semblance of him before me.” There is so much empathy in Saru’s voice, such certainty, and Michael is ashamed that she can’t find the same grace within herself.

Saru snaps on the monitor and adds, “Your privileges aboard Discovery will be limited. But I will not take your freedom.”

He turns and Michael wills him to take her with him, order her to join him on the bridge, where there are other people, other problems, where she won’t be alone with her thoughts, won’t be alone with _him_ , but Saru gestures for her to stay put. His smile is sad, his expression kind. “Take your time, Burnham. I will comm you if need be.”

And then he’s gone.

Michael’s stomach feels like a churning knot of eels, unsettled and unsettling. If she had eaten anything today, she knows she would be gagging on it now.

Her limbs are heavy, inanimate objects that barely belong to her. She can’t move towards him, can’t so much as open her mouth.

 _His hands were around my neck_ , she thinks. _He tried to kill me._

He would have succeeded if not for sheer luck.

“I know that you can never forgive me.” The voice sounds small, weary. “How could you, after what I did?” In the periphery of her unfocused gaze, Michael sees a jaw clench. “What I turned out to be.”

She still can’t move, but she forces her eyes to find the face behind the words.

 _Ash Tyler._ She makes herself think the name as she looks at him.

He’s the shadow of a man she thought she knew. Naked legs hanging uselessly over the side of the bed, his body bent forward, like it wants to curl in on itself. He looks miserable, diminished and pale. Lost.

“I just want you to know how sorry I am, Michael.” His voice cracks on her name, shatters like a boat against rock.

His hands are in his lap, denting the fabric of his hospital gown, and he’s scratching at his cuticles with the nail of his thumb.

Forlorn, that’s what he looks like.

She doesn’t want to say it, everything in her is repulsed by the sentiment, rebelling against it, but her head perseveres. She will do the right thing.

“I know it wasn’t you,” she says over her tongue swelling into her mouth, trying to drown out the words, over the panic thrumming through her body, shrill and unrelenting like alarm bells.

She takes a step forward and reaches out her hand, projecting decisiveness, confidence she doesn’t feel.

She has let too many people down. She will not forsake him, too.

\--

His hand rests on the table, next to his lunch, and she knows what this is. It’s an offer, an invitation. One she can’t refuse if she wants him to get better.

She glances at him – surreptitiously, she hopes – while she dissects her food with slow precision, prolonging the time both her hands are occupied.

He seems to concentrate on his food, but his eyes keep losing focus, keep coming back to her. They’re on her face, on her shoulder, on her hands. Then on his own hand between them. The muscles in his fingers twitch, like he wants to touch her, or maybe move his hand away. 

_You don’t have to do this_ , he had said. _Take all the time you need._

 _You should hate me._ He had said that, too. _I don’t deserve you._

And, when she had held him, had willed her heartbeat into submission, had made her breath even and her touch gentle: _I love you. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I don’t know who I’d be without you._

Her plate is filled with perfectly-carved bite-sized pieces, and as she sets aside the knife, she can feel the expectation in his gaze.

She takes a breath, forces it to be calm and steady, then fashions her features into a smile as she looks up and lays her hand on top of his. She makes her eyes meet his, and gives his hand a quick squeeze as she spears her first forkful of food.

His answering smile is warm, intimate even in the crowded mess hall, and it reminds her of Pahvo. Ash Tyler and her in a tent by the fire, talking, whispering, sharing hopes and dreams. Kissing for the first time, gentle and perfect.

Something inside her grows softer, wants to melt towards him, but then he opens his mouth to take a bite of his meal and his teeth are bared, shining crescents like the curved blades of a bat’leth.

Her toes curl inside her boots, an involuntary fear response she can barely keep from spreading through her body.

It takes all her strength to maintain her facial expression and engage in a perfunctory bit of conversation about the food.

She doesn’t register the taste at all.

\--

“Thank you, Michael,” he tilts his head and gives her a nervous smile, one she knows she would have been charmed by not so long ago. “I know I say it too much, but I just don’t have the words to express how grateful I am.”

They’re in Ash’s quarters. Another place filled with tainted memories. Where they held hands and each other. Where she felt so safe, so close to Ash Tyler, that she fell asleep in a man’s arms for the first time. Right here, on this very couch.

“Having you here, being there for me after everything, after all the mistakes I’ve made,” he swallows and she knows his eyes are about to spill over again, begging for sympathy, “it’s so much more than I deserve.”

She makes a shushing noise and moves closer to him, until she can easily touch his knee, pat it in reassurance he needs so much he doesn’t realize she’s faking it.

In her lungs, there’s a scream gathering like a storm, taking up more and more space. A flurry of her own words and pain wanting to break free.

_You lied to me. You said that if it got to be too much, that if you couldn't handle it, you would come to me. And it did. And you didn't. And that wasn't Voq, that was you._

Her face stays impassive, her mouth closed.

“I should have told you about losing time.” He shakes his head and the first tear falls. “I should have told you about L’Rell; that I confronted her, how confused and conflicted I felt when I heard her speak the call.”

He looks up and his cheeks are wet. “How can you not hate me after what I did? How can you not walk away?”

She knows the sentiment, has heard it before. The delivery always genuine, the eyes always full of hope that she would stay regardless, that she would see him for whom he thought he was.

 _I can’t_ , she wants to say. _I have to go._ Get up and leave and never see him again. But Saru is right, this isn’t Voq. This is a man, human, a prisoner of war, one who was tortured and broken and remade. A pawn in someone else’s game.

She can’t leave him, no matter how wrong it feels to be with him.

Her arm slides around him and she recites a Vulcan meditation chant in her mind as she pulls him against her chest, making her breathing submit to the mantra’s even rhythm.

His body still feels like before in her arms, his hair against her jaw just as silky and its smell so familiar, and for a moment, she can feel her love for him welling up from a place deep within, feels almost at peace.

A hand slips across her hip, a light touch, but it triggers an instinct, hammers alarm in the back of her skull.

_He’s dangerous. He tried to kill you. Run._

She makes her body still.

_Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale._

And then that refrain, the one she wills herself to believe: “It wasn’t me. I’m so, so sorry, Michael, but it wasn’t me.”

\--

He’s asleep in her arms, his body burrowed into her side, his head on her chest.

The faint glow of low lights paints his quarters in shadows, deepens the color of his hair against her tee, and she wishes she were anywhere else. 

His weight is a leaded blanket holding her down; his even, heavy breaths a constant reminder that she’s not alone, that she has to keep up her guard.

For the first time today, she can let go of her own breathing. She can allow herself to let it speed up and sputter, can stop reining in the beat of a pulse that wants to gallop, her heart full to bursting with blood, agitated, too big for her ribcage, pounding all the way up into her throat.

That thump-thump-thump of panic filling her head.

She has no right to feel this way.

It wasn’t his hands she felt around her neck. It wasn’t his eyes that looked at her with contempt, with murderous frenzy.

Only they were.

_It wasn’t me, Michael. I could never do something like this, especially not to you._

She can’t make sense of it, no matter how much she wants to, how hard she tries.

There’s something soft inside her, too, something that wants to reach out and call to him, but it’s a scared and panicked thing.

When she looks down on him as he is now, his dark lashes fanned out against his face, unnaturally pale still from his ordeal, she feels the beginning of a smile tug at the corner of her mouth, but then she sees a shadow move – _imagines_ she sees a shadow move – and a memory invades her thoughts, of him moving in on her, threatening her, trying to kill her. It makes her skin prickle, feel pulled too taut around her flesh.

_He killed Dr. Culber. He would have killed you._

If the Klingons embedded an even deeper programming, if it activates now, no one will save her. They’re alone in his quarters. Nobody would even think to look for her until she’s supposed to be on shift tomorrow.

Because they’re barely monitoring him. Because they seem to trust L’Rell’s word and his.

So why can’t she? Why is this terror eating her up from the inside, making her stomach clench like a fist that’s trying to pull her body in on itself.

_It wasn’t me._

But it had been him. The body heavy against her now is still the same, the brain and nerves and muscles that wanted to kill her are still there. Not an ounce of matter was removed from his body during the procedure. She checked the medical log.

So how can he be different?

These thoughts are as useless as they are dangerous. She can’t let them poison her mind. She can’t let them keep her from healing.

She will get used to it. She will get over it.

Soon, she will be able to sleep again.

Soon, she will be able to breathe again.

Soon, she won’t need to keep her guard up all the time.

Soon, she will feel love again when she looks at him, not doubt and panic.

Soon, all will be well.

\--

“These candles look so real,” he says as he gestures around them. “I still can’t believe that they outfitted all crew quarters with holographic emitters.”

Michael nods. “It feels excessive,” she says, “but Tilly is right, we might as well use it.”

He laughs. “So she’s the one who set this up.” He takes her hand and squeezes it lightly. “I should have guessed.”

Michael makes herself focus on a memory of Tilly, how excited her friend had been to set up a romantic dinner for Michael and Ash in their shared quarters while she’s on night shift.

“It will be a surprise, Michael.” Her eyes had sparked. “He’ll love it. And you will, too, even if you won’t admit it.” Her smile bright and soothing like always. “Nobody can resist my dad’s replicator patterns for linguine al salmone.”

Then, softer. “I’m so glad you two are making it work.” A probing look. “I know it must be so hard for you, too.”

Work, that’s the operative word. Michael just has to put in the work. Act like she should until it comes naturally.

She can do this. She has done it before.

\--

Another night with him in her arms, another night she can’t sleep.

Meditation helps her calm down, but not enough to let go, to submit to sleep when she’s lying next to him.

 _Him_ , always him.

She still has trouble thinking of him as Ash. Has to make herself refer to him with that name.

Sometimes Michael thinks about Ash Tyler’s dead mother and what she would call this man. Sometimes she thinks of a skinless corpse on a Mocai ship somewhere.

Harvested memories, replicated personality engrams, transferred DNA.

What makes the measure of a man?

Michael doesn’t know. She wants a test, a scale, something to assess him with, but he passed them all before. His trauma response consistent with the experiences of Ash Tyler, Starfleet lieutenant.

Were there warning signs? Of course there were. But they all pointed towards Lieutenant Ash Tyler, torture victim, prisoner of war, traumatized soldier. They didn’t point to Voq, enemy spy, torchbearer, Klingon.

His body, the one that presses against hers now, the one whose breathing fills the air around her, is made up of Voq’s body, that much is certain.

Michael knows a thing or two about bodies and identities, how entangled they are, how divisive they can be. She spent too long resenting her naturally curly hair, her red blood and her puny, rounded ears. Tried so hard to fashion herself into a Vulcan. Made every effort, every sacrifice, but it was never enough. Even as the top graduate of the Vulcan Science Academy, she was found lacking.

Mind doesn’t win over matter, she knows. A weak human body can never be Vulcan, no matter how hard the brain inside of it tries. So much hard, punishing work, but it will never be enough.

So how could a Klingon warrior body, no matter how diminished in form and function, how curtailed in its strength, ever be the vessel of a truly human mind?

After the procedure, L’Rell had stopped talking to them, but from Voq’s memories they know that he was a test case.

But what if he’s lying, or even if he doesn’t know better?

Once the Klingons extracted what they needed from Ash Tyler, why not make more of him? An insurance policy, in case their first specimen turns out to be defective. It would only be logical.

How many could they have made of him?

She has to stop this mental cycle, has to stop obsessing over these thoughts.

She will get used to it. She will get over it.

Soon, she will feel love again when she looks at him, not doubt and panic.

Soon, all will be well.

\--

Michael’s grateful for her regular shifts, for those hours she doesn’t have to see him, where she can work and breathe easier, where she can focus on her tasks and drown out most of her private thoughts that way. Of course her tasks always involve the war with the Klingons these days, so Saru or Cornwell or Sarek frequently make her consult with Ash.

Her tongue seems to swell in her mouth every time she needs to comm him, making her lose her breath, pressing against her palate until her head aches.

\--

“I want to show you something.” His smile is so warm, tinged with boyish excitement, that for once her mouth curves in reply without her willing it to. For a brief while, she’s almost at ease, almost calm.

He holds up a piece of black string and winds it around his fingers.

She forces her mind away from ominous places.

_Stay calm. He wants to share something with you. That’s normal. It’s good. Much better than yet another apology._

“This is a bowline.” He holds up the knotted string. “It doesn’t run. It doesn’t slip.” He pulls at it to prove his point. “It’s the first thing I learned as a kid that made me _me_.” His voice grows softer, heavy with meaning. “It ties me to my past. Who I am.”

He unties it with nimble fingers.

“Now you try it,” he says and shows her how.

She focuses on the movements of his hands and her own, concentrates on mimicking what he does, and for a while, it almost works, feels almost normal. Learning, practicing, getting better.

A smile forms on her lips when she gets the hang of it, her motions swift and precise, almost as fast as his. With a sense of pride, she holds up her work.

“You’re a quick study.” He smiles proudly. “But I already knew that.”

His hand strokes along hers, and for a moment, she doesn’t want to recoil.

Her eyes find the bowline again. It looks like a noose.

\--

His hand is still wrapped around one of hers and Michael tries to extricate herself without waking him. Their fingers sliding against each other makes her think about skin.

He said they flayed his skin, but she doesn’t know if he meant Voq or Ash Tyler. Maybe both.

Did they wrap the reduced Klingon body of Voq in the skin of Ash Tyler? Has she been touching a corpse’s skin all this time?

She thinks about what she knows of his body, how she remembers its shape and surface from before. Had it been too perfect? Should she have noticed?

How could the skin of a torture victim be so soft, so free of scars and bruises?

Had she thought Discovery’s doctors had healed his scars, just like they would his broken bones? Had she thought about it all?

It makes her sick, the lump of her stomach sweating bile into her esophagus.

When she looks at him now, he seems wounded, almost small, but he’s a hulking predator, too.

Michael wants to focus on one and forget the other, but they are entwined in her perception to a point where she can’t divide them, where she’s afraid that she’ll never be able to see just one of them.

_I should have come to you._

_I wanted so much to protect you that I wound up hurting you._

_How can you ever forgive me?_

_I don’t know what I would do without you._

A constant stream.

And whenever Michael thinks she has found enough room to breathe in, gather enough air in her lungs to scream her own anger and her own fear, he floods that place, too, with apologies and self-recrimination.

These are poisonous thoughts, she knows. To atone for them, she slides her arm around his shoulder, knowing that even in his sleep, he will take the chance to get closer, to smother her in his embrace.

He has gone through so much, she reminds herself, more than anyone should have to go through. He’s a victim, too, and she owes it to him to stay calm, to support him, to not leave him.

Soon, it will be better.

__

“Specialist,” Dr. Pollard says, giving Michael a stern look. “Your hormonal profile seems to be highly unbalanced.”

They’re in the transporter room, about to beam to the Orion’s trading outpost on Qo'noS.

The doctor was supposed to administer a quick wellness scan and send them on their way. Now Michael feels her heart contract and expand in her chest with increasing speed. She takes deliberate breaths to slow it down.

Dr. Pollard looks at her tricorder. “It looks like you haven’t slept in a week,” her finger swipes along the display and her forehead creases, “or like you’re caught in a continuous fight-or-flight response.”

“I was undercover on a Terran ship.” Her words come out in a hiss. “I had to kill people who looked like my friends. I almost didn’t make it out alive.”

“Of course.” The doctor doesn’t look as chastised as Michael would have hoped. “Still, some markers, like your cortisol levels, have actually deteriorated further since your return to Discovery.”

Michael gives her a curt nod. “I’ll be sure to consult with you on a course of treatment right after this mission.”

Dr. Pollard may not know the details, but she knows how important their assignment is.

“Okay,” she says and gets a hypospray ready. “Let me just give you something to allay the symptoms short-term.”

The effect is almost instant, and for a moment, Michael feels something like peace, like she could finally fall asleep. She presses her lips together in an acknowledging smile. “I appreciate it, doctor.”

She turns towards the transporter platform, where Ash, Tilly and the Terran Emperor are waiting.

Ash’s eyes seek her out and she can see the worry in them. She doesn’t make eye contact, just looks at his forehead as she plasters on a carefully calibrated smile.

\--

“Michael,” Ash says, and the way he looks at her is so open, so concerned, that it breaks her heart. “I want to be there for you, too, you know?” He bites his lip. “But you have to let me in.”

Their team split up a while ago to cover more ground in their investigation, and now she’s alone with him.

After he tried to extract information from a group of gambling Klingons, they have some time to themselves while they wait for further intel or orders from the Emperor, and he tries to follow up on what Dr. Pollard said.

Michael can’t tell him about her sleepless nights, about the near-constant dread she feels when she’s with him, about the panic welling up inside her when he makes a quick movement or a guttural sound in his sleep, so she tells him another truth. Tells him about the night her parents were killed by Klingons, and it guts her how much of her own pain she sees reflected in his features.

“How could you not hate them – and me?” he asks, voice brittle, and she just wants to make that pain go away, hers and his, so she kisses him, holding his hands in hers as she does.

He tastes the same as before, his skin feels and smells the same, and on this enemy planet, surrounded by Klingons, she can almost convince herself that he’s human after all.

\--

Their mission is a success, even if it’s in a completely different way from what the Federation and the Emperor had planned.

Michael doesn’t want to trust L’Rell, can’t ever forgive or forget what she did to a man called Ash Tyler that Michael never knew, but she knows that this is their best chance, their only chance, to end the bloodshed. Maybe not peace, exactly, but an armistice.

After the necessary matters have been settled, Michael leaves the caves to find Ash leaning against a wall.

He strikes up a conversation, pretending to be casual about it. Even through the shield of falseness that has accumulated around her, she feels that something is different. Something scratching at her, not quite breaking skin.

She’s grateful when he tells her that L’Rell is about to be picked up by the Mocai. The sooner she addresses the twenty-four houses with her ultimatum, the sooner this war will end.

And then, they’ll have time. Time to find themselves again, to rebuild themselves. Time to rest at last.

“I’m going with her,” he says, and Michael inhales with surprise she doesn’t quite feel. 

She should ask him to stay. His place is by her side, not on Qo'noS.

She says nothing, can’t even uncross the arms in front of her body.

His mouth bends into helpless shapes until he finds the words. “It’s true, what the emperor said. I’m no good for either side.” The certainty in his voice squeezes at her insides. “But maybe I can be good for both.” There’s a question in his eyes, but she doesn’t know how to answer.

He looks away. “I’ve never been great at goodbyes.”

_Then don’t go. Stay with me. Let’s fight our way through this, together._

The words won’t come out, turn to ash on her tongue. “Neither am I,” she says instead. “I’ve had too many of them.” Another small truth she can give him. Another chance squandered to give him more, give him what she knows he needs.

“Michael.” She can see the tension in his body, how he wants to come closer and bridge the space between them, but won’t allow himself to. “In spite of everything that happened to you, your capacity to love literally saved my life.”

A larger truth he gives to her in turn. It’s meant as a gift, but it only reminds her of her failures.

He should be an activated Klingon spy but he isn’t, because of _his_ capacity to love, to love _her_.

Why aren’t her own feelings for him strong enough? Why can’t she conquer her doubts and fears to help him be the man she fell in love with? Why can she help save an entire planet, but always fails with those that matter to her most?

Ash’s head tilts and his eyes shine. “I’m gonna miss looking at you.”

And finally, she finds the strength to let down her guard, hands falling to her sides, arms no longer shielding her body as she takes a step towards him.

“I see you, Ash.” Affection wells up inside her, a deep fondness that’s almost able to drown out the scared, bird-like flutter of her pulse. “In your eyes.” She wants it, wills it to be true. “Only you.”

His eyes cut away and she can’t decipher the turmoil in his features, but then he leans in for an embrace, his cheek against her temple, his hands on her hips.

She grips at his shoulder, and for a moment, she wants to melt into his warmth, slide her eyes shut and simply hold on to him, but her muscles coil despite herself, her body on high alert. Her eyes stay wide open.

He pulls back, but only enough to kiss her, gentle and careful, his lips soft, his beard somewhat rough. Even as she grabs his neck, he keeps his hands down, away from her throat.

When they part, he rolls his lips between his teeth as if in pain, but his eyes are tender. “But you don’t,” he says with the finality of truth.

His head shakes almost imperceptibly. “I hope you will again. One day.”

 _It doesn’t matter_ , she wants to say. _Don’t leave_ , she wants to say. _I love you._

Her lips won’t move.

“Thank you,” he stutters – his expression so vulnerable, _so human_ – and presses the side of his face against hers before he walks away.

A sob in her chest breaks free, but it comes out as a deep breath.

She watches him go to L’Rell, and right when the transporter picks up their signal, Ash turns around and their eyes meet before he dematerializes.

And then he is gone.

“One day,” Michael says, already breathing easier, but with a new heaviness in her bones.

Her hand balls into a fist around the small object he pressed into her palm.

She doesn’t have to look to know that it’s a bowline.

**Author's Note:**

>  _My mother, moving across the air_  
>  _of all of this, must have known how falling_  
>  _in love is something like dying after all._  
>  _Something the seas and sky evade_  
>  _to survive the centuries. ___  
> \- from "Falling, 1968" by Tishani Doshi
> 
> This is a companion piece to an unposted Michael/Ash reunion story. Right now I'm pondering writing another part about Ash sending Michael messages during his time on Qo'noS before posting that fic. We will see.
> 
> Like all my stories, this is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>  **Feedback** : short comments, long comments, questions, constructive criticism, "<3" as extra kudos, reader-reader interaction
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> You can also hit me up on tumblr: [drstrangewillseeyounow](http://drstrangewillseeyounow.tumblr.com/)


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